Whatever You Love

February 20, 2012
Doughty (Crazy Paving), author of several novels and a nonfiction book based on her column in London’s Daily Telegraph, tackles the loss of life, love, and rationality. Laura Needham is a single mother raising two children, nine-year-old Betty and her younger brother, Rees. On page one, police arrive at Laura’s door with the news that Betty has been killed in a hit-and-run accident. As Laura grapples with her daughter’s death, her already complicated relationship with her ex-husband grows more so. “Before” and “After” sections alternately detail Laura’s past and present with her husband, his new girlfriend, and their new baby, and chronicles Laura slowly losing control of her mind. In the process, she discovers an anger that will not go away, and moves to the brink of a breakdown that might end in violence. As Laura sinks more deeply into grief, anger, and disorientation, opportunities for healing appear unexpectedly, yielding a heartfelt and affecting story. Agent: Grainne Fox, Fletcher & Company.

March 1, 2012
Dead child, cheating husband, stalking, mental breakdowns, misunderstood immigrants--few melodramatic prompts go unexplored in this tale of domestic woe. Laura, the narrator of the sixth novel by Doughty (Fires in the Dark, 2004, etc.), is suffering from two emotional catastrophes. The first is the collapse of her marriage to David, who left her for one of his co-workers. The second, and most devastating, comes a few years later, when their 9-year-old daughter, Betty, is killed in a car accident in their quiet British town. Doughty structures the story by bouncing back and forth in time to cover Laura's mental state before and after the accident. In doing so, she draws out the occasional keen observation about husbands and wives and mothers and daughters. But the novel is also saddled with bland characters and plot turns that are unengaging when they don't defy credulity. In one thread running through the story, Laura struggles to identify the author of a series of intimidating and taunting anonymous messages, but its resolution is unsurprising and ultimately irrelevant to the story. Another subplot involves the anti-immigrant sentiment that pervades the town, focused on the Albanian man driving the car that killed Betty; in time the connection between him and Laura becomes closer, but then grows unconvincing and absurd. The novel was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Costa Book Award, presumably on the strength of its portrait of grief--in its more meditative moments, Laura's feelings of shellshock are powerful, and her recollection of the day of Betty's death is turned with agonizingly patient prose. But such moments are overwhelmed by ungainly police-procedural touches, and the novel's shifts between the past and present sap its momentum. An overly earnest portrait of one mother's suffering.

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November 1, 2011

Laura has just endured that devastating event every parent fears and dreads: her nine-year-old daughter has been killed in a hit-and-run accident. Now she's seeking the driver. Doughty certainly has writing chops--she's been short-listed for the Costa Novel Award--and this novel has been optioned for film. Definitely worth investigating, though be prepared to hurt.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 15, 2012
Laura Needham lives a parent's worst nightmare when her nine-year-old daughter, Betty, on her way to a dance class after school, is hit by an errant driver and killed. Laura's grief, raw and horrible, is truly shared only by her ex-husband, David, who left the family for his attractive young assistant, Chloe, with whom he has an infant son. With the accident in the opening pages, the narrative alternates between Laura's life before and after the event, detailing her early life as the only child of a widowed, middle-aged mother stricken with Parkinson's and her passionate courtship and marriage, followed by the births of Bettyinstantly the apple of her father's eyeand Rees, now a preschooler. Afterwards, Laura vows that she will find whatever the driver loves and take it from him. Bonded by tragedy with David, who must deal with an increasingly unstable Chloe, Laura behaves dangerously and puts herself at risk. Seldom have the subjects of love, loss, and retribution been treated with such emotional power as they are here. Award-winning English author Doughty, who is intrigued by the effects of accidents, has written a masterfully structured novel that is as indelible as it is painful.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)